UAH ISEEM Department hosting systems engineering conference

The 14th Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER 2016) will be hosted by The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) Industrial & Systems Engineering and Engineering Management (ISEEM) Department March 22-24 at the Von Braun Center.

"Although this conference is 14 years old, it has only been held in Los Angeles, New York, and Atlanta. Now it is coming to the national center of systems engineering, Huntsville," says Dr. Paul Collopy, ISEEM department chair. "By holding CSER in Huntsville, two very good things will happen. First, the Huntsville systems engineering community will have an opportunity to see firsthand the future of systems engineering - researchers will be presenting the most advanced approaches to systems engineering from across the nation and around the world. Second, visitors from Washington, D.C.; universities all over the country; as well as Europe and Asia will see the systems engineering that goes on here in Huntsville, at NASA, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), the U.S. Army Aviation & Missile Research Development & Engineering Center (AMRDEC); and throughout Huntsville industry."

Although this conference is 14 years old, it has only been held in Los Angeles, New York, and Atlanta. Now it is coming to the national center of systems engineering, Huntsville.

Dr. Paul CollopyISEEM department chair

Keynoting the conference is Kristen Baldwin, the acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for systems engineering at the Dept. of Defense. Distinguished visitors include Brian Muirhead, chief engineer of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Ron Sega, former director of defense research and engineering in the Pentagon and a Space Shuttle crewmate to Huntsville's Jan Davis.

The closing speaker is UAH eminent scholar and professor of systems engineering Dr. Dale Thomas, along with Dinesh Verma, the executive director of the Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC), the first university affiliated research center established by the Dept. of Defense for systems engineering research.

"CSER will be an important moment for Huntsville, but it is also an important event for UAH, and particularly for the ISEEM department," Dr. Collopy says. "Over the last seven years, UAH has invested in systems engineering and earned a reputation as a national center of theoretical research in systems engineering, and it is primarily this focus that brought CSER here.

"In 2014, we hired Dr. Bryan Mesmer, one of the most promising young systems engineering researchers in the country, and in 2015, UAH brought in Dr. Dale Thomas to serve as the eminent scholar in systems engineering, " he says. "We now have a team that is competitive with any school in the country in our specialty of systems engineering theory."

Besides UAH, sponsors and hosts of CSER 2016 include Dynetics, MITRE, Davidson Technologies, the International Council on Systems Engineering, the Systems Engineering Research Center, NASA, QTEC, Lockheed Martin, Geocent and Aerojet Rocketdyne.

CSER has become the primary conference for disseminating systems engineering research and germinating new research ideas. CSER is now poised to become the leading conference for theoretical work in systems engineering, while retaining its emphasis on practical application. At CSER 2016, researchers from around the world will be presenting papers that push the boundaries of systems engineering research and respond to new challenges for systems architecting and engineering.